WE-Africa Lab

Building Wellbeing Economies in Africa

Economic instability, social inequality, poverty, and depletion of energy make it necessary to call into question the conventional development paradigm based on the exploitation of nature, continuous production and consumption, social exclusion, and privatization of common resources.

The WE-Africa Lab is an opportunity to stimulate collective change for a wellbeing-centred development model in Africa. A new economic and social approach that should not only improve the lives of African people and the quality of our ecosystems, but that can also become a source of inspiration for the rest of the world.

Dates and Locations

“Our aspirations reflect our desire for shared prosperity and well-being, for unity and integration, for a continent of free citizens and expanded horizons.”

Agenda 2063; The Africa We Want

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Participants

The participants come from diverse backgrounds and sectors. They are academics, business leaders, social innovators, policy makers, civil society activists and others.

Lab Impressions

The Process

The Lab has been designed as a form of deep dialogue capable of triggering personal transformation, which becomes a powerful driver of change through the connection with collective leadership and strategic action. These three levels – personal, collective, and strategic – are essential to developing transformative actions that are sustainable over time and achieve significant outreach and impact.

Too often good ideas are not implemented, because people struggle to organise effectively or fail to alter the structural constraints hindering social change. Through dedicated sessions focusing on personal transformation, collective action, and strategic thinking, and through a forward-looking orientation based on the skills, experiences and initiatives already developed by the participants, the Lab aims to inspire leaders across the African continent to lead sustainable change and generate ripple effects throughout society.

The WE-Africa Lab provides a space for enquiry and experimentation around the following core objectives:

Encouraging cross-sectoral collaboration: The Lab provides an opportunity to develop and consolidate links between a diverse group of people, committed to a profound social, political and economic transition in Africa.

Developing transformative action: The Lab provides an experimental space that merges research and practice with a view to generating innovations for a wellbeing economy. Transformative actions may be small-scale or span across countries and partners.

Supporting a continental network of change agents: Through its research-action orientation, the Lab contributes to the development of a continent-wide network of change agents. The Lab will strengthen the WE-Africa network, an alliance spanning the continent and involving more than 50 change leaders, which will guarantee the sustainability and longterm efficacy of the Lab.

Impacting public discourses on development: Ideas, findings, recommendations and transformative actions that emerge during the Lab process will be fed into relevant networks to impact global debates on development in the 21st century.

“I am losing the struggle to remain the same … I am embracing opportunities to open my mind, open my heart and acknowledge and use my willpower to do something.”

Our Convening Partners

Further partners

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